In row with Zambia, NGO abruptly cancels world human rights conference, points to Chinese interference

A gateway near Lusaka's Kenneth Kaunda International Airport
marks Zambia independence from Britain in 1964.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Blaming interference by the Chinese and Zambian governments, global digital rights organization Access Now canceled the 2026 meeting of RightsCon, one of the largest human rights conferences in the world, on April 29, just days before thousands of delegates were to converge on host city Lusaka, Zambia.

I was already in southern Africa for RightsCon when the announcement came. I thought it prudent not to write about the cancellation until I left Zambia. I am home in the United States now.

Those of us in Lusaka naturally were in contact with one another. We agreed that our exchanges of information would be subject to the Chatham House Rule, and furthermore, that we would be non-specific about the nature—time, place, medium, scope—of our communications. Accordingly, there is information in this account that is not attributed but comes from reliable sources.

RightsCon returns to Africa 

RightsCon has been a gathering place for international leaders, thinkers, and organizations to discuss digital rights policy, including internet censorship, electronic surveillance, and technology ethics, almost every year since the first conference convened in Silicon Valley in 2011. Also founded in California, in 2009, global nonprofit Access Now takes the lead in organizing RightsCon, with tech companies and allied civil society organizations around the world contributing expertise and resources.

I was in Tunis, Tunisia, for the first RightsCon meeting in Africa, in 2019; I wrote about it here at The Savory Tort. The 2026 meeting in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, was to mark the first meeting of RightsCon in sub-Saharan Africa. Access Now anticipated 2,600 in-person participants in Lusaka, besides 1,100 more online, representing 150 countries and 750 organizations in more than 500 sessions.

Generally, large, world conferences of any kind are exceedingly difficult to locate in sub-Saharan Africa, outside of South Africa, if only because of infrastructure limitations—airline routes, meeting space, accommodations, food preparation, security. The challenge is often cited as a chicken-or-egg factor in stalled African development, as the lucrative likes of business and medical conferences pass on the region even when they have development on the agenda.

Add to the mix the human rights focus of RightsCon, and its 2026 location amid the fragile democracies, such as Zambia's, in central Africa, and the conference was set to be an especial boon to the region. RightsCon Zambia was conceived to be a game changer, to show what could be done.

The RightsCon ethos condemns rights-oppressive digital manipulation such as internet shutdowns, which are an authoritarian go-to in regimes across sub-Saharan African (e.g., The Guardian). RightsCon also prizes equity in online participation, thus embracing expression by and about women and minority groups, including the LGBTQ community. That's sensitive subject matter in a region in which child marriage, female genital mutilation, and criminalization of same-sex relations are live, hot-button issues.

Access Now was keenly aware of all of these challenges and worked hard to coordinate RightsCon in constant collaboration with Zambian officials, since a first meeting in 2024. More than a few rights activists were critical of Access Now, preferring to eschew sub-Saharan Africa on the theory that the economic advantages and favorable press of a global human rights conference should be withheld from the region.

I rather agree with Access Now that the social and economic opportunity of an event such as RightsCon should be positioned to counterbalance anti-democratic incentives. After all, civil society organizations that advocate for human rights and the protection of women and minority persons continue working in these countries, placing themselves at grave risk, regardless of whether activists from abroad turn up in solidarity. So better to turn up.

RightsCon 2026 goes south

Access Now described what happened in late April in a detailed May 1 statement. According to the statement: "On April 27, one day after a government press release endorsed RightsCon, we received a phone call from MoTS [Zambian Ministry of Technology and Science] about an urgent issue and were told that diplomats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person."

RightsCon 2025 was held in Taipei, Taiwan. I was there and wrote about the conference here at The Savory Tort last year. The programs I highlighted at that RightsCon covered topics such as Chinese surveillance technology, opportunistic Chinese technology investment in Africa, and the vulnerability to malicious actors of undersea information infrastructure in the Pacific.

I was surprised then that such conversations could happen with impunity in Taiwan, just offshore from watchful mainland China. Now, it seems, they could not, not without consequences.

It wasn't Access Now that first called off RightsCon Zambia. After the MoTS phone call, Access Now sought to open dialog with Zambian officials and Taiwanese delegates. Then, on April 28, Access Now was blindsided by a government announcement that RightsCon was "postponed"—a logistical impossibility. Access Now also "received reports of immigration officers telling participants as they arrived that RightsCon had been cancelled."

In Zambian news outlets, Technology and Science Minister Felix Mutati said that "additional time is required to ensure all preparatory arrangements fully align with national procedures, diplomatic protocols, and the broader objective of promoting a balanced and consensus-driven platform."

The "postponement" was restated in an April 29 press statement by the Zambian Ministry of Information and Media. Information and Media Secretary Thabo Kawana wrote: "The postponement was necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit. Such disclosure is essential to ensure full alignment with Zambia's national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations."

Access Now learned through informal channels, it wrote in its statement, that "for RightsCon to continue, we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation."

To do so would have been antithetical to Access Now and RightsCon's very mission. So Access Now itself then canceled RightsCon and urged delegates to abort travel to Zambia.

China pulls strings

When I first read the information ministry release and its reference to "Zambia's national values," I did not yet know about the role of China behind the scenes. I rather suspected that Zambia was turned off by the friendliness of the RightsCon agenda to expressive freedom for women and the LGBTQ community. No doubt my perspective is colored by my own past research on civil rights in East Africa (presented at a Law and Society conference at the University of Cape Town in 2016). 

I wasn't entirely wrong, though. Zambian discontent with other aspects of RightsCon programming meant that officials did not have to have their arms twisted too hard to nix the conference.

Nearly a quarter of girls in Zambia marry before they turn 18, though, it must be acknowledged, that percentage has fallen more than 15 points in recent years thanks to government efforts. Gay sex is illegal in Zambia and punishable by imprisonment. The LGBTQ community is persecuted by blackmail and criminal prosecution (more at Amnesty International). Needless to say, these matters are not mentioned on Zambia's tourism website.

Another source of contention, which I had not recognized, is labor rights, especially in extraction. Weak regulation and abundant unlicensed operations leave quarry and mine workers, sometimes including child laborers, plagued with accidents, yielding some hundred injuries and fatalities annually, besides social and environmental damage. Every year brings a new horror story—a landslide at an open-pit copper mine in 2023 (AP), a quarry collapse in 2024 (Africa News), a pit collapse in 2025 (IJHub).

Chinese interests moreover are implicated in mining hazards. In 2025, a dam collapse at a Chinese-state-owned mine in the Zambia Copperbelt wrought environmental catastrophe. Fifty million liters of toxic waste poured into rivers that supply more than half of Zambians with water. Mass die-offs of fish and birds were immediate, and Kitwe, a city of 800,000, had to shut off its water supply.

Lawsuits have been brought against mine owner Sino-Metals Leach Zambia, and the long-term environmental impact in the Kafue River Basin is still being assessed. The Kafue River flows south from the Copperbelt through ecologically critical and touristically important Kafue National Park. Sino-Metals promised to compensate victims, but is implicated in covering up the scope of the disaster.

A campaign-season banner in Lusaka touts incumbent achievements.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Access Now in its explanation of the RightsCon cancellation fairly chose to emphasize Chinese interference as dispositive, and to gloss over other issues. Rights advocates were concerned, especially after the information minister's reference to "values," that authorities would aim to distract from their subservience to China by scapegoating the LGBTQ community. Such a move is known in the government playbook, as when previous crackdowns on political dissent were willfully mischaracterized as protecting traditional Zambian society from western liberal deviance.

Election season is under way in Zambia with the presidency and legislature in play. Voters go to the polls in August. The cancellation of a conference as large as RightsCon is wreaking adverse economic impact in Lusaka and across the country, in tourism and support-service sectors, not to mention leaving Zambia with an embarrassing black eye among nations. The incumbent president could lose his narrow lead in the polls were the public to come to understand as well that China, author of the Kafue disaster, was pulling Zambia's puppet strings.

Whither America?

When I learned of the RightsCon cancellation, I was not in Zambia, but in neighboring Malawi. Oddly enough, I went to Malawi before RightsCon to have a look at the substantial impact of Chinese infrastructure investment in that country.

I have written here at The Savory Tort before about the dangers to global security of strategic Chinese investment in the developing world, for example, two years before RightsCon Taiwan, in places such as Maldives. I hope to write about what I saw in Malawi later, my experience there being overshadowed now by the RightsCon story. 

Meanwhile, the coincidences piled up when, on April 30, a different story from Zambia broke in international news. Unexpectedly that day, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Michael C. Gonzales delivered a farewell speech that sparked a conflagration of domestic debate and intensified discord with Washington. The Lusaka Times described what happened:

What was expected to be a routine diplomatic send-off quickly became a national political flashpoint after Gonzales questioned the credibility of anti-corruption efforts, raised concerns about institutional accountability and warned about governance weaknesses that continue to undermine investor confidence. His remarks landed at a time when political temperatures were already rising and economic frustrations remained deeply embedded among voters confronting high living costs and employment pressures. 

Gonzales was a Biden appointee, but he signed on to the new agenda when Trump went back to Washington. After the radical rollback of U.S. foreign development aid, in statements in 2025 and earlier this year, Gonzales expressed regretful support for the suspension of aid to Zambia for purported reason of the country's inability to corral corruption.

As The New York Times described the situation late last week, Gonzales's remarks came at a critical juncture in negotiation between the United States and Zambia over what "America First" economic relationship will replace the dismantled USAID model. Like China, the United States is eyeing Zambian mineral reserves and, observers allege, seeks to strike a deal on favorable terms of access in exchange for at least a billion dollars in health aid. 

Gonzales denied that mineral access is a bargaining chip in U.S.-Zambia aid negotiations. But a draft State Department memo leaked to The New York Times suggested otherwise. The Times reported plainly in March, "The State Department is considering withholding lifesaving assistance to people with H.I.V. in Zambia as a negotiating tactic to force the government of the southern African country to sign a deal giving the United States more access to its critical minerals."

The U.S. has renegotiated health aid with 20 other African countries, the Times reported, usually upon receiving the nation's commitment to shoulder more of the burden itself on healthcare. Ghana and Zimbabwe walked away from renegotiation. Nations have balked at U.S. demands that they share healthcare data and biological samples, sometimes for longer than the aid term, and without converse guarantees of access to research findings. These issues are at play in U.S.-Zambia negotiations.

Yet the renegotiation with Zambia seems specially to incorporate mineral access, too, according to Times reporting on the leaked draft memo: "[T]he United States is trying to use the deal it is negotiating with Zambia to address a longtime source of frustration: what is sees as China's unfettered access to the country's mineral wealth. Zambia is one of the world's major copper producers, and also has huge reserves of minerals like lithium and cobalt, all of which are key in the green energy transition."

According to Times reporting, some 1.3 million Zambians rely on daily U.S.-funded antiretroviral therapies, besides the country's dependence on U.S. aid to hold tuberculosis and malaria at bay. The United States is threatening cuts on a "massive scale," according to the leaked memo. A Zambian official condemned the equation of mineral access with lifesaving aid, the Times reported—though I saw no public recognition of Zambia's parallel arrangements with China.

On the street in Lusaka, I heard mixed feelings about the U.S.-Zambia row. I expected to hear disappointment and frustration at the termination of USAID and the threatened loss of health aid. But the outrage I heard was directed at Zambians' own government.

Many people I talked to framed their assessments with the experience of family members who depend on aid to live with HIV. Even what would seem a modest cost to a U.S. taxpayer for prescription drugs, mere dollars a day, would put treatment beyond reach for many in Zambia, where median income is about $4 per day.

Though U.S. threats to stop HIV assistance pointed to a deadline in May, Zambians told me that the drugs already are becoming scarce. It's possible that healthcare providers and corrupt officials are hoarding supply.

And therein lies the source of Zambians' frustration. People I talked to agreed with Gonzales and echoed U.S. allegations that aid is improperly diverted by corruption. Characteristically, one man expressed his support for President Trump, saying he liked that Trump "is his own man." Zambians seemed willing to go along with at least economic aid cuts if it would mean an end to corruption and more assistance hitting the ground in the long run.

In retrospect, it makes sense that anti-establishment Trump rhetoric would resonate with African constituents accustomed to self-reliance amid weak public institutions and politicians who promise much and deliver little. Still, I'm not sure an all-access pass for American corporations to Zambian natural resources is going to leave Zambians any better off than they are under the Chinese yoke. 

Zambians I spoke to had little more regard for China. They regarded Chinese investment as having proved self-serving of both Chinese laborers and investors, and having added little to Zambians' economic prosperity. That's pretty much the story on Chinese investment as I've found it elsewhere on the continent. I wonder whether Zambians will be surprised to find that that's now the American strategy, too.

A baobab tree says good night at South Luangwa National Park.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Sub-Saharan Africa navigates new world

Persons working on rights issues in and about Africa agreed that the cancellation of RightsCon under these circumstances is a devastating blow to democracy in Africa and the developing world. Conference organizers boldly endeavored to show that it could be done, that sub-Saharan Africa has the maturity and sophistication to take its seat at the table and to join the global dialog on human rights in the technological age. Now the takeaway is confirmation for the naysayers: reinforcement of the dangerous trope that Africa is a backwater, inexplicably mired in underdevelopment. It will be a generation, one activist lamented, "before anyone tries this again."

I worry even more about the confirmation of the Chinese foreign policy model. The cancellation of RightsCon at the behest of Chinese political demands, while Zambian natural resources are plundered and human capital exploited—soon by America also?—seems to confirm our global retreat from "the end of history" in western liberalism, and, in its place, a terrifying, seemingly inevitable human tendency to cling to the primacy of might.

Bhutan turns tourism into 'Gross National Happiness'

At the Takin Preserve: Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay
with me and visitors from the United Kingdom and United States.

Little more than a half century ago, the Kingdom of Bhutan was walled off to the world.

Today, tourists are welcome, but with strict controls that aim to leverage social and economic development.

Earlier this month, I traveled to Bhutan and had the privilege of meeting the prime minister, the Hon. Tshering Tobgay. The PM was visiting the Motithang Royal Takin Preserve in Bhutan, located just outside the capital, Thimphu.

Takin calf at the preserve.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The takin, by the way, is a large mammal native to the Himalayas, a genetic relative of sheep. One subspecies of takin is specific to Bhutan and is revered as the national animal. The preserve provides a sanctuary for the massive herbivores, thus also protecting the environment from their destructive appetite.

Tobgay was not at the preserve for a refresher on Bhutanese fauna; rather, the PM was escorting the 2025-appointed American ambassador to India and special envoy for south and central Asia, Sergio Gor, on a touristic and diplomatic visit. Gor was reciprocating a Tobgay visit to the United States in December.

Tobgay and Gor, at the PM's right, feed a takin.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A longtime Bhutanese politician, Tobgay is American educated. He earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1980s and then a master's in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School in the 20-aughts. He published a book in English last year: Enlightened Leadership: Inside Bhutan's Inspiring Transition from Monarchy to Democracy (inset below).

Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy, though still leans heavily on the monarchy part of the description. The crown initiated a policy of democratization in 1952. A first national assembly was appointed the following year and given the power to impeach the monarch. Today, the king formally appoints the prime minister, though in practice the appointee is elected by the legislature. Similarly, final decisions of the Supreme Court formally are referred to the crown for approval.

Supreme Court of Bhutan, Thimphu.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In modern international law, Bhutan is renowned for its commitment to "Gross National Happiness" (GNH), a national policy priority introduced in the 1970s. A holistic measure inspired by Buddhism and informed by factors such as health, education, and living standards, GNH has been embraced conceptually by the international community—Bhutan joined the United Nations in 1971—as an alternative to economic productivity, the conventional measure of a country's success. One Bhutanese host explained to me that GNH does not mean every person is happy; rather, GNH describes the aims that should justify national policy-making.

Bhutan opened to foreign tourism only in 1974 and allowed television and the internet only in 1999. It still guards its borders jealously, allowing a limited number of tourists who must book through state-authorized agents and pay a US$100-per-day sustainable development fee. When I visited, my visa was arranged wholly by the tour service I used.

However restrictive Bhutan's social and political conservatism, I could not argue with the results I saw on the ground. People I met in Bhutan expressed affection for the king and queen, often noting that the royal family lives in a modest home and champions public education. Schoolchildren I happened upon in Thimphu were uniformed and polite, while also cheerful and playful, and they spoke English confidently.

Buddha Dordenma, visible from Thimphu center.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The sustainable development fee seems to be well reinvested in infrastructure, such as paved roads, and touristic sites, such as the 177-foot Buddha Dordenma statue, completed in 2015, that towers over Thimphu. A travel companion told me that the winding rural roads we traveled were unpaved when he visited a couple of decades ago. In literacy and life expectancy, Bhutan significantly outpaces its cohort in the "medium" range of the U.N. human development scale.

Thimphu, capital of Bhutan.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Insofar as I heard any gripe about government policy from the Bhutanese, it was that high-quality healthcare remains elusive, especially in the countryside. Nevertheless, when an American travel companion asked my guide about the cost of treatment after the guide mentioned a family member's cancer, the guide narrowed her brow in puzzlement. Then she shook her head, understanding the question, and said, "free, of course."

Rinpung Dzong, or "Paro Fort," a 15th-century monastery
and top tourist destination, in Paro, Bhutan's third-largest city.
Owned by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Thinking over what we had seen, some of my travel companions wondered aloud whether monarchy might not be so undemocratic after all. That struck me as curious after what I heard about some Nepali youth protestors speaking wistfully of monarchy there. Invariably upon such musings, an American, sometimes me, would say that the efficacy of monarchy might depend a bit too much on who is wearing the crown.

The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Bhutan, thus Ambassador Gor's visit as special regional envoy. Gor has some personal connection to, well, at least the Asian continent. He was born in Uzbekistan—"Gor" is a chosen truncation of Gorokhovsky—and migrated with his family to the United States, via Malta. He graduated from secondary school in Los Angeles.

Amb. Gor

How did an L.A. immigrant wind up with an ambassadorship in the Trump administration? Gor has been involved in Republican politics since his post-secondary days at George Washington University. His recent ambassadorial qualifications include fundraising for President Trump and starting a Trump-reverent book publishing company with Donald Trump, Jr.

After the 2024 election, the President appointed Gor to head personnel appointments. President Trump later credited his "great friend" Gor with "nearly 4,000" party-loyal hires in the new administration. Presumably Gor himself included.

'Gen Z' favorite sweeps to victory in Nepal election

Teens celebrate secondary-school
graduation in Lalitpur. A youth
movement toppled the Nepali
government in September 2025.

Kathmandu, March 14—Rapper turned politician and Gen Z champion, "pugnacious" 35-year-old Balen Shah will be the next prime minister of Nepal.

This is an update to The Savory Tort Photo Essay, Kathmandu quiets for watershed election day (Mar. 5, 2026). (All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

Shah's party won an outright majority in the Nepali House, which selects the prime minister, with 182 of 275 seats. (Read more at Al Jazeera.)

The victory comes six months after a self-described "Gen Z" protest movement toppled the government in Nepal in a mix of peaceful and violent demonstrations.

However much this sea change is identified with discontented youth, a coalition diverse in age, geography, and socioeconomic status is pinning high hopes on the incoming Shah administration.

A dry spell has accumulated smog in the Kathmandu valley.

Anecdotally, traveling in central Nepal in Kathmandu, Bhaktipur, Lalitpur, and more rural Nagarkot, I found no one unsupportive of the new regime. Many persons, young and old, shared their elation over the election result before I could ask.

Issues on the minds of voters are no surprise. People I spoke to a week after the election expect Shah to improve access to education and employment.

Secondarily, younger voters want to see improved infrastructure as a means to facilitate economic development. Older voters were prone to mention healthcare and social welfare, especially for persons unable to work because of age or disability.

Those secondary issues are related. Youth have left remote farming communities in search of economic opportunity in the capital region or abroad. The migration and brain drain undermine the tradition of multigenerational habitation and care for the elderly.

With Mr. Tamang Friday.

Kedar Tamang's life experience is illustrative. Tamang left his native farming community for Kathmandu, where he earned a master's in political science and built a career in tourism. A past president of the Tourist Guide Association of Nepal, Tamang balances a demanding work regimen in a scrappy field with care for an elderly parent and two teenage sons, not to mention pleas for aid from extended family in the capital and back home.

Tamang hopes Shah will effect development to make Nepal a world destination and leading player among non-aligned nations. But disillusioned by past regimes in Nepal's short democratic history, and cognizant that even renowned democracies such as America fail to meet their people's basic needs, Tamang mitigated his optimism with believe-it-when-I-see-it caution.

Kathmandu residents told me they saw substantial improvements in services and infrastructure when Shah served as mayor of the capital. Now the Nepali people hope he can deliver on a vastly greater scale.

Kathmandu quiets for watershed election day

 A Savory Tort Photo Essay

A usually busy intersection in the Thamel tourist district is nearly vacant.
Rickshaws offer transport with most taxis and busses banned. 

Kathamandu, March 5—The streets of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, were strangely quiet and low-key festive today, as the country voted in the first election since "Gen Z" protests brought down the government in September. (All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

(UPDATE, March 14: 'Gen Z' favorite sweeps to victory in Nepal election.) 

Voters queue at a polling place in Kathmandu.

The Army was visible throughout the city, along with a smaller presence of metro police, especially where people queued at polling places. Most businesses are closed, private motor vehicle traffic is banned, and a 9 p.m. curfew is in effect.

Democratic graffiti adorns a school wall.

Despite the fear of unrest that prompted the heavy security, people turned out to walk the streets with their families, smiling as they greeted neighbors. The mood is not jubilant, but neither is it tense. The election is coinciding with the Holi holiday.

A major thoroughfare is nearly deserted.

Of the soldiers I saw on the streets, most looked bored, and some laughed together. The BBC reported one minor incident at a rural polling station east of Kathmandu, where an argument resulted in assault on an election official. Police restored order after firing a shot in the air.

A recreational field, though outfitted for football, draws cricketers.

The capital city was not so serene when protesters toppled the government in September 2025. Seventy-seven people were killed in the unrest, including 22 protestors. Government buildings, including the Supreme Court and Kathmandu district courts, were attacked and burned.

The rides at Ferris Wheel Funpark are still. 

Protestors described themselves as "Gen Z" in a country in which more than half the population was born in the 21st century. The protest movement was remarkable for having been largely coordinated online, especially on the Discord platform. Discord's organization and posting permission system made it resistant to government surveillance and control.

Burned in the 2025 protests, the old Supreme Court building stands vacant.

Partly triggering the protests was a government attempt to shut down communication and social media outlets, including Google's YouTube, and Meta's WhatsApp and Facebook. The government alleged the shutdown was part of a plan to impose online service taxes. But the move followed swirling allegations on social media of government corruption.

Set back from the road and begun already in 2021,
a new Supreme Court building is 85% complete.

Online coordination resulted in real-world assemblies, some peaceful and some violent, and boycotts of schools. The protests might have been sparked by the online shutdowns, but youth anger had reached a boiling point over reported corruption, nepotism, and lack of economic opportunity. 

A medical student in Kathmandu won't vote because his hometown is 16 hours away.

Youth unemployment surpassed 20%, while the national economy was increasingly propped up by fees and remittances derived from emigration, rather than domestic development. Stories of "Nepo Kids," elite youth with political connections flaunting wealth, meanwhile went viral online, stoking resentment. 

The "Supreme Court Annex," foreground, hosts court staff presently;
the new court building rises behind.

Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli was forced to resign in September. In the absence of a working government, the Army took control. Despite some violent clashes, the Army did overall maintain the peace and sought to restore civilian leadership.

The Nepali Bar Building:
Lawyers are helping to restore case files lost in the protests,
including 20,000 files of past and present Supreme Court cases

The military command negotiated with protesters, and as a result, former Supreme Court Justice Sushila Karki was installed as interim prime minister, pending the present elections. Though 73 years old, Karki is highly respected by conservative government supporters and youth protestors for her independence and relative political neutraliity.

Army Headquarters, Kathmandu:
The Army worked to restore civilian government after the protests.

Now voters are choosing 275 representatives for the national House, and its composition will determine the next prime minister and the social and economic direction of the country. 

Amid the 2025 protests, a football friendly between Nepal and Bangladesh
at Dasharath Stadium was canceled.

The ousted Oli is in the running. Some voters are uneasy about the instability on display in September and see a conservative choice as a return to normalcy.

A mural outside Dasharath Stadium depicts Nepali prowess
in a wide range of sports and games.

Oli faces a colorful challenger in Balendra Shah, a once rapper and structural engineer turned politician, and, until he resigned in January, mayor of Kathmandu. The Shah campaign features rap lyrics that bemoan corruption and unemployment, resonating with youth. If 35-year-old Shah outperforms Oli in the election, the result will be viewed as a sea change for Nepal.

In Thamel, election news blares from the wall in a restaurant.

A third candidate with youth appeal is Gagan Kumar Thapa, president of the Nepali congress. Though 49 years old, he has a history of activism and presents as a less volatile option than Shah, who is known to be prickly and ornery toward media.

Though many voters want reform, there is disagreement about how best to accomplish it. Conservatives fear that the youth movement and Shah in particular might be so hellbent on economic improvement as to be willing to cede democracy to incompetence, or worse, authoritarianism. A strand of the protest movement did suggest restoration of the monarchy.

Of the vast slate of candidates up for election, many are first-time politicians, and a third are party independents. For voters' part, a million people, in a country of 29.6 million in sum, have registered to vote for the first time. 

At the same time, there are logistical as well as political challenges to representative democracy in Nepal. The country is three and a half times the size of Switzerland and covers famously mountainous terrain with relatively few roads. In fact, the lack of highway and transportation infrastructure as a prerequisite to economic development is on the youth movement's list of complaints. Ballots must be transported in places for hours by foot and helicopter.

Meanwhile, archaic voting laws require people to vote in their home towns, even if they have long relocated for work. One of the reasons for relative quiet in Kathmandu is that 800,000 people, according to a BBC estimate, have left the city to vote.

In Kathmandu today I met a medical student who had not voted. His hometown is 16 hours away, he said, and he could afford neither the trip nor the time away from studies.

Despite logistical challenges, the Nepali election chief told the BBC that he expects to report results no later than March 9.

Belan Shah's "Nepali Political Rap" at YouTube

Protestors burn transit stations in Madagascar capital; is American frustration so different?

Protests over lack of water and electricity turned violent late last week in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and the government responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, and a curfew.

(UPDATE, Oct. 14, 2025: Madagascar President Rajoelina has fled the country, and the military has assumed control of government, purporting alliance with protestors.)

I know about the crisis because of friends with family there. I have not seen the story on American TV, which I mention with anxiety over endangered media heterogeneity. You can read more about the protests at, e.g., Reuters (UK), TRT Afrika (Turkey), RFI (France), WION (India), Al Jazeera (Qatar), and if you dig for it, the AP (US).

I was in Antananarivo, known locally as "Tana," in July. The people there could not have been more gracious and welcoming.

At the same time, socioeconomic tension was plain. That's not unusual in African cities, but in Tana, by plain, I mean that there were troubling and unavoidably visible signs of increasingly worrisome economic inequality. 

Antananarivo, Madagascar, July 2025
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

A Tale of Two Cities

Tana from the Radisson gym.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

I used the nicely equipped gym on the eighth floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Tana. The room has floor-to-ceiling windows that afford a view of the city from the treadmills. But if one looks straight down from the windows, immediately adjacent to the hotel, there is a residential warren of ramshackle homes. Children play on clay paths between crumbling walls and an open sewer. The neighborhood is right behind a concentration of auto shops, noxious with exhaust and dribbling out the toxic effluents of their work.

Shanty town and auto district adjacent to Radisson. A cable-car line is visible on the horizon.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In contrast, the Radisson itself is part of a small swanky village that boasts a grocery store, theater, cafes, and gift shops. The village is enclosed by high walls with only one road in from the auto-shop strip. At night, a massive steel door rolls shut to seal off the Radisson village. 

The scene is reminiscent of the fictional town of Woodbury in The Walking Dead, fortified against an incongruent dystopia. Though to reiterate, here, in real life, the souls outside the wall are good people trying to make ends meet. As the sun sets, all but a few local people evacuate the commercial village before the door closes, and then they flow back in with the light of dawn.

Kids play beside a drainage canal behind the Radisson.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Even the walled Radisson village, anyway, is not immune from Tana's socioeconomic troubles, because the utility infrastructure is the same, inside and out. The tap water is not recommended for drinking, and power outages are frequent, if usually short.

Malagasy people generally don't have freezers and shop daily for produce. The cost of appliances would be manageable for many. But the problem would remain the power grid, which is not sufficiently reliable, even in the city, to make home refrigeration cost effective. When the power goes out, most of Tana life hums on without interruption. But the outages paralyze places such as the Radisson village, where devices from refrigerators to televisions to elevators are essential to business.

In bizarre juxtaposition with the motley cityscape, wires are strung across Tana's skies, visible from anywhere. The wires reach from tower to tower and occasionally dip groundward into modern multistory buildings of metal and brick. This is Tana's brand new cable-car system.

I was not surprised to read that protestors last week set fire to "several" of the cable-car stations.

Madagascar and the Monorail 

A cable-car line fills the sky behind the Tana train station.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

 

The motivation for building the cable-car system was ostensibly sound. Tana is plagued by jammed traffic, which is impeding economic development. One of the reasons people crowd into the tight and unsanitary living quarters of the inner city is that they could not otherwise reach their jobs if they moved to better accommodation on the outskirts.

The cable-car lines promise to soar over the cars and trucks, moving people into and out of the city with quiet efficiency. The lines also are built to reach less developed surrounding areas, rather than tracking the congested main highway, thus inducing new suburbs to bloom and alleviating the crisis of housing, besides transportation.

One doesn't have to look hard at the plan, though, to doubt its cost-benefit analysis. To start with, the road congestion is a function of infrastructure failure as much as volume. Though there are some recently constructed traffic circles, most roads are unmarked by lanes, and most city intersections are chaotic tangles with no right of way indicated by signs or signal lights.

One wonders that infrastructure money might have been spent better to bring the existing potholed road system up to standard before stringing cables over head between shiny stations.

Cable cars hang motionless over Tana in July.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Then there are the cable cars themselves. The first time a friend and I had a look at them, I couldn't help but say aloud, "That wreaks of kickback." My friend agreed. We both thought immediately of "Marge vs. The Monorail."

The 198 gondola cars can hold only 12 passengers each and move only so fast. The system is designed to move daily 75,000 people and replace 2,000 cars on the road. That's not nothing, but also not a big chunk of potential commuters relative to the city's population of 3 million. And if one figures that growing suburbs will attract more people to Tana from impoverished parts of the country, the problem of induced demand is compounded.

Though cable cars are touted as a potential boon for urban development, they work best as a discrete-route solution for particular hurdles, such as topography, and as a complement, not a substitute, for proven mass transit systems such as busses and rail cars, both lacking in Tana. A "bus system" exists only insofar as terribly overcrowded minibuses barrel along customary routes. Limited inter-city locomotives rumble over dilapidated tracks.

Is There a Hyena in the Debt Trap? 

It's unclear from government reporting just how much the cable-car system cost Madagascar, but it's a lot. The price tag was supposed to be €152 million. The French government loaned the country €28 from the French treasury and arranged for the rest by private loan from Société Générale. Malagasy voters were not happy about the indebtedness. Moreover, Madagascar committed to fund any cost overruns. Some reports say that the French loans wound up covering only one of the two system lines.

The government's revenue basis to fund cost overruns and pay back the loans also is shaky. Malagasy people have balked at the cost of tickets on the cable-car system, which range from about €0.65 to €1.1. That might be low by western standards, but it's a lot locally. Daily round trips add up to at least €32 per month in a country where the monthly living wage is only €126, and €85 marks the low end of actual-wage estimates.

President Andry Rajoelina, 2019
(ILO via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The government has not been forthcoming with data about the project, and no wonder. Malagasy-French businessman Andry Rajoelina has been president since 2019 and held out a technological solution to Tana's legendary traffic woes as a showpiece project. 

Rajoelina's vision has been slow to come to fruition. Plans were sidetracked initially by the pandemic. The French money came only in 2021, and construction began in 2022, with delivery promised in two years. In 2024, the Rajoelina administration inaugurated the cable-car system amid much fanfare and worldwide press. But the system wasn't actually finished then, and operational opening was postponed to 2025. 

On my last day in Tana in July 2025, the cable cars moved, surprising everyone on the ground. The system was not yet open, but was being tested. Buckets of water were loaded into cars to simulate the weight of passengers. The system finally opened in August.

The worst public relations challenge the cable-car system has posed to the Rajoelina administration to date is not its ultimate efficacy, but simply the foreboding physical presence of the empty gondolas hanging motionless over the city. When people are stuck in traffic, or when the power goes out, or when they leave their homes in search of drinkable water, they look up at the network of towers and heavy wires and wonder whether any of that debt and spending will make their lives better.

Don't Look Up 

I'm sometimes guilty myself of a siloed focus on American affairs. And thinking about what's happening in Madagascar makes me wonder whether—when?—the day will come that Americans turn our frustrations into conflagration.

America feels every day less a "developed" country in terms of critical needs such as transportation, healthcare, housing, and jobs. And people struggle more every day to make ends meet, while politicians bellyache over the government supposedly doing too much.

An anecdotal survey: 

Transportation. To travel for work, I have to make the arduous, two-plus-hour trek to the airport via foot, bus, train, and bus again, across slow, unconnected, and overpriced transit systems that my region is lucky to have at all. When I land in Europe, I'll travel about the same distance with one ticket on a rapid, unified transit system in under an hour.

Amtrak is hard at work on "NextGen Acela." But it will only serve the northeast corridor and will top out at 160 mph. Europe hit that mark in the 1970s with trains today running in the 190s. China and Japan have high-speed trains on dedicated lines running at 220 mph. Anyway, "old gen" Acela was a corporate subsidy, as it practically priced out non-business travelers, even before Amtrak introduced predatory dynamic pricing. 

Healthcare. My wife and I saw Trevor Noah deliver his latest stand-up in Connecticut a couple of weeks ago, and he did a long bit on the nonsensical costs and bureaucracies that tyrannize patients in the U.S. healthcare system. Noah was treated for a wrist injury he sustained just before boarding a plane home to New York from his native South Africa. He could have been treated faster and for less out of pocket had he just flown back to a hospital in Cape Town, he only half-joked. 

A Connecticut stage awaits Trevor Noah on September 18.
(RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Most memorable about Noah's monolog to me, besides his trademark storytelling brilliance, was the chorus of audible vocalizations of assent and empathy from the audience, including us, as Noah described the absurdities of hospital billing, from the mysteries of bloated pricing—weren't we promised "No Surprises"?—and picayune itemization of the mundane to the unashamed prioritization of profit over care.

Housing and jobs. My daughter bought a home in Los Angeles this year and has done yeoman, Instagram-hit renovation work herself. But she's looking for a new job to make the mortgage bearable. From her scores of applications, she recently rated an interview in her entertainment-industry wheelhouse. Yet she was one of 54 people interviewed for one low-level position. A form email later communicated regret that she was among the hundreds of unsuccessful applicants. Every American job-seeker knows such woes amid the full-time job of looking for a job, despite the touting of low unemployment by the administrations of both parties.

A measure of wealth inequality, the U.S. gini coefficient was 41.8 in 2025, on a scale from 0, perfect equality, to perfect inequality 100, according to World Population Review (WPR). That's bad for a well developed economy, comparing unfavorably with, for example, western European countries, which score in the low 30s, and Canada, at 29.9. Worse, inequality in the United States is rising over the long term, while it's falling elsewhere.

Our number is, however, on par with Madagascar. Malagasy data are difficult to come by, but WPR estimates a 2025 gini coefficient of 42.5, also on the rise over the long term.

The gini coefficient is a ratio, so it doesn't speak to comparable sums. People in a poorly developed economy might be quicker to disrupt the status quo when their very survival is on the line than people in a highly developed economy who become unable to afford cable TV. 

At the same time, Americans have a temperamental sensitivity to injustice and, even after 250 years, little patience for tyranny.

History is littered with great societies befelled by their own greedy elites.

Conflict ebbs in West Africa; entrepreneurs ready to welcome tourism, spark economic development

Conflict is ebbing in West Africa, and local businesses are hoping to spur tourism and economic development to restore ravaged communities.

Many parts of West Africa have been difficult to reach in recent years, owing to armed conflicts and social turmoil. That means cultural treasures such as UNESCO World Heritage Site Timbuktu have been off limits, and communities that would benefit from foreign spending suffer economic paralysis or worse.

The situation is improving, if at a two-steps-forward-one-step-back pace. To navigate the changing terrain and start restoring tourism and economic opportunity, local entrepreneurs such as Mali-based Satimbe Travel are stepping up.

Ouologuem dances at the Ouidah Voodoo Festival, Benin, 2020.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I hope to travel with Satimbe because my friend Hamadou Ouologuem is one of its founders and a tour leader extraordinaire. I am happy to give him and his partners some positive press in the interest of regional development. This is in no way a compensated promotion.

Satimbe has been in the works for many years. The project has prevailed over potentially ruinous setbacks in the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, and in the outbreak of violence in the Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger), in 2023. The latter conflict devastated communities, as rival factions—one being the Russia-based Wagner mercenary force—deployed scorched-earth tactics against civilians, inflicting crises of hunger and housing. 

The conflicts have not wholly abated, but have been scaled back to hot spots that guides can plan around so travelers avoid. 

In August, the Mali government felt comfortable enough with security in Timbuktu to return there ancient documents that were removed to the capital Bamako before al-Qaeda militants occupied the city in 2012 (PBS NewsHour). Meanwhile, in a positive development for civilian security, Wagner forces in Mali have experienced what The Sentry, a D.C.-based nonprofit and war-crime investigative organization, described in an August report as a "meltdown."

Satimbe mask
(In Museum CC0)

My two cents: attacks on civilians and resulting humanitarian crises in the Sehel would headline the world news were it not for the West's peculiar blind spot for Africa. The region needs foreign investment, and as importantly to get started, needs foreign interest and understanding. The way to help is simply to go, responsibly, all the better relying on a homegrown service provider such as Ouologuem.

Ouologuem's experience in the region is renowned; he is the on-the-ground coordinator to whom professional producers turn, especially in Mali. He worked on public broadcasting's Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; BBC One's Sahara with Michael Palin; Into the Unknown with Josh Bernstein: Lost Gold of Timbuktu; and Digging for the Truth: Timbuktu.

A "satimbe" is a ceremonial funerary mask of the Dogon people in Mali and Burkina Faso. The mask is associated with a female figure, like in the Satimbe Travel logo, placed on top.

Satimbe Travel can arrange tours in Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, and Ghana. The company can tailor flexible itineraries for two days to two weeks, or more. The company is prepared to make arrangements for tourists, NGOs, missionaries, and corporations.